09.01.1997

Break from Labourism - vote Labour

A statement by party members in the South-West on the SLP electoral policy

“Like millions of our fellow citizens Socialist Labour hopes that the Tories are hated to such a degree that they will not be returned to power at the next election.”

Unfortunately the editorial from which this quote is taken, in the first edition of Socialist News, does not face up to the question of what the SLP will do, other than hope. If we recognise the need to remove the Tories, then we have to say how the working class can achieve it at the forthcoming election. Of course, we are not electoralists. We recognise that the chances of electoral defeat for the Tories would be improved by the success of working class struggles. Indeed we should condemn New Labour because its policy and strategy is undermining our chance of defeating the Tories as a result of its opposition to workers’ struggles (the post office dispute, the underground workers, their refusal to support the Liverpool dockers, and so on). In neglecting its traditional base of support and offering nothing to the victims of the last 17 years it may deepen the level of abstention. However, in the absence of an upsurge in mass struggles, the working class will look to the general election to remove the Tories.

After 17 years of massive attacks on our unions and jobs and big defeats, not unreasonably working people consider the outcome of this election to be crucial. They will in their majority vote for New Labour because they consider it the only means of defeating the Tories in the general election. This is a realistic and rational judgement. The SLP is not a mass party and there is no sign that it will offer an electoral alternative to New Labour in the short term. The overwhelming majority of workers do not as yet recognise us as a credible alternative. We would wish it otherwise, but it is not so yet.

Even if the SLP were to stand 100 candidates (which we believe unlikely) what do we do in the other 500-odd constituencies? The silence of the editorial implies that we cannot vote for New Labour. Is this really the opinion of the NEC? We have to state a clear position on this. There are some comrades in the party who are opposed to a vote for New Labour even in those constituencies where the SLP will not stand. Such a position is in our view ultra-left. It is based on the superficial judgement that ‘there is no difference between Labour and the Tories’. However, to abstain is to fail to act on the basis of the immediate interests of the working class. The re-election of the Tories would be a disaster for the working class. It would deepen the demoralisation which exists throughout the labour movement. It would lead to the privatisation of the rest of the railways, a further attempt to privatise the post office, more anti-union legislation, and so on.

If the SLP is seen to act against the interests of the working class by failing to follow an electoral policy based on the need to remove the Tories, this will serve to undermine our chances of recruiting opponents of Blair who have not joined us, but may well do so in the future.

So far as we are concerned, there is no contradiction in us calling for the return of a New Labour government whilst stressing that we are aiming to build a socialist alternative to it. If we understand that it is imperative to remove the Tories from office, then we are merely recognising the relationship of forces is not in our favour. We are recognising that the SLP cannot defeat the Tories at the election. We are recognising that the chances of building the SLP as a credible alternative, with a mass base of support, will be improved by the removal of the Tories and retarded by their return to office.

Moreover, the test of a New Labour government in office will deepen the contradictions which emerged into the open at the TUC. The reality of a Blair government will sooner or later create a crisis deep in the heart of the labour movement as a refusal of that government even to contemplate the minimum proposals of the TUC (right to secondary strike action, employment rights from day one, etc) and the test of what it does in office.

At our founding conference we did not discuss electoral policy. We are a new party, with a membership of diverse political origins. The NEC should organise a discussion amongst the entire membership on this question. We should not rush into generalised electoral activity without even considering the relationship between it and the class struggle, the type of party the SLP should be. Such an unconsidered course will drag us into an electoralist approach and will tend towards the creation of a sort of leftwing version of the Labour Party. However, if the SLP is to develop into a genuine socialist alternative to New Labour it must make a conscious break from the methods and politics of social democracy which have dominated the Labour Party since it was founded. Electoral activity has its place, but we must not create illusions that the struggle for socialism is simply a question of the SLP winning an electoral majority and then implementing socialism through parliamentary bills.

We are asking for this statement to be circulated to the members for their consideration.